Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to data to support decision-making, more specifically data to support healthcare decision-making.
Background of the Invention
According to the Pew Internet Life survey, 72 percent of adult internet users say they looked online for health information within the past year. Of these, 77 percent of online health seekers say they began at a search engine such as GOOGLE, BING, or YAHOO. Another 13 percent say they began at a site that specializes in health information, like WEB MD. Just 2 percent say they started their research at a more general site like WIKIPEDIA and an additional 1 percent say they started at a social network site like FACEBOOK.
Most online health information-seeking activity to date has focused on disease and treatment, with over half of all users engaging in looking for information relevant to disease and diagnosis. Notably, despite the availability of a number of sites that facilitate provider reviews, health care reviews have not caught on among general consumers. While 8 in 10 internet users say they have researched a product or service online, less than one in five internet users have consulted online reviews and rankings of health care service providers and treatments. Similarly, when it comes to writing reviews of general-interest items, 37 percent of internet users say they have rated a product, service, or person online and 32 percent have posted a comment or review online about product they bought or service they received. People are much less likely to post a review of a treatment, hospital, or clinician. Between 3-4 percent of internet users have done so.
Compared to many other consumer-directed areas, healthcare recommendations, particularly around healthcare provider choice, still remains an area that is dominated by the word-of-mouth opinions of friends and family as well as the recommendation and referral of the patient's current healthcare provider as opposed to utilizing unverified and uncurated healthcare provider reviews online. According to the Center for Studying Health System Change, over 50 percent of primary care choices are aided by word-of-mouth from friends or relatives. While that number drops to approximately 20 percent for specialists, it can be surmised that the reduction is partially due to the increased role of the healthcare provider in recommending referrals to the patient as well as the difficulty of the patient finding relevant information for more specialized needs within a narrow offline friends and family network. Additionally, with the proliferation of health plan options and with the growing need for consumers to select healthcare providers from ever changing lists of in-network and out-of-network providers, the need for consumers to identify new healthcare providers will only continue to increase.
Traditional reasons patients search for new healthcare providers include suspecting a new condition or problem, seeking a second opinion, moving, changing insurance, dissatisfaction with their current doctor, costs, or needing a certain procedure. As noted, today this is usually accomplished by word-of-mouth from family and friends or by recommendation by healthcare providers. While a number of sites such as HEALTHGRADES, VITALS, WEB MD, YELP, PRACTICE FUSION and ZOCDOC provide some sort of doctor search functionality, most sites rely on a combination of quasi-factual directory information (provider specialty, payers accepted, education, location, hours) and patient reviews, and none of these sites leverage any sort of trusted referral methodology. Unfortunately, the lack of scale, comprehensiveness, and currency of patient reviews combined with the lack of curation means that most individuals do not use or trust these reviews today. For many other subject areas such as finding a restaurant or buying consumer electronics, the nature of those doing the reviewing may not be highly relevant to those reading the reviews. In healthcare, however, most patients and caregivers have a more complex view of who to trust in determining which healthcare providers to use and the quality of the healthcare providers that is not being met by current models.
According to a 2014 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research study, family and friends are the most trusted source of quality ratings about doctors, with over 60% of Americans saying they would very much or completely trust quality ratings of doctors or other health care providers they receive from friends or family members, versus roughly half saying they would trust quality ratings they receive from their regular doctor or other individual health care provider. Beyond those two sources, however, Americans overwhelmingly lack trust in other sources of quality ratings of health care providers. Current provider ratings websites rank near the bottom, with only 10% saying they trust the quality ratings they receive from these sources.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved system and method of storing, linking, querying, and reporting healthcare data.